Strategic digital marketing for small businesses
Generally speaking, any topical discussions around marketing for small businesses in our modern age should be centred around how technology should be used to assist your business operate and grow. The term ‘digital business’ is the start of the conversation about using technology to create new value in business models, customer experiences and the internal capabilities that support its core operations. The term includes both digital-only brands and traditional brick and mortar businesses that are transforming their businesses with digital technologies.
Many older businesses are looking to transform into a digital organisation. Digital transformation is the adoption of digital technology by a company, and the common goals for this implementation is to improve efficiency, value or innovation.
Digital business is all about working smarter — not harder. When researching marketing for small businesses any business owner should start by adopting digital business concepts that will help boost productivity, improve customer experience, and leverage business intelligence. (If you’re an existing business, ideally push towards a Digital Strategy).
Strategic digital marketing for small businesses
Digital strategy is an evolving and fluid term. It can mean a variety of different things depending on what type of businessperson you ask.
A digital strategy for small businesses is a targeted plan that harnesses the power of online platforms and tools to effectively promote their products or services, connect with their target audience, and achieve business objectives. This includes utilising various digital marketing channels such as social media, search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing, email marketing, and online advertising.
A well-crafted digital strategy helps small businesses improve their online visibility, increase brand awareness, engage customers, drive website traffic, and ultimately grow their business in the digital landscape.
Simply put, a digital strategy is a plan that seeks to align data assets and technology-focused objectives. It involves selecting which technologies your business will invest in and how these technologies will help to boost the performance of your workforce and bottom-line.
As a leading Sydney small business marketing agency COG Branding focuses on using technology to improve business performance, whether that means creating new products or optimising current processes. It specifies the direction a business will take to create new competitive advantages via technology, as well as the tactics it will use to achieve these changes. While it sounds complicated and sophisticated, a small business just starting up can use a digital strategy to great advantage, plus it doesn’t have to be expensive.
Digital marketing continues to grow in importance simply because people are spending more time online, and marketing budgets continue to shift toward digital activities. With so many opportunities in digital marketing, it is easy to simply start pressing buttons and thinking the latest article on how can google ads and google search help small business will provide all the answers. However, investing in your strategy is one of the best ways to grow your digital return on investment and make sure that the money you do spend provides a clear return.
Creating a digital business strategy can set you up for an effective online presence, regardless of what web options you choose. A digital strategy:
- outlines what you want to achieve using digital technologies, and how you hope to achieve it
- involves thinking about what your goals are and deciding how to achieve them
- clearly defines responsibilities
- provides a road map for your business’s future
- gives you control of your business success.
Ideally, while it seems a little harsh, small business can benefit early on from thinking about Trading Human Labour for Software and Technology. A small business has time as the most valuable thing you’ve got to manage, so the digital business strategy should include project management and workflow softwares that either do the job of a human, or increase the efficiencies of the humans doing tasks. The software will cost money, but humans are way more expensive and over time the bottom line won’t lie. It’s wise to build in an annual financial assessment of recurring costs and software subscriptions versus the human labour costs associated for doing the same tasks.
COG Branding is a Sydney technology solutions agency with an approach that transfers knowledge to business and brand stakeholders with the goal of increasing client side intelligence. We know this assists the success of the broader businesses digital transformation process. Part of the COG Branding small business technology service suite is to provide aftercare that maintains the investment and achieves ongoing performance. COG Branding can digitally transform your small business.
